House seeks contempt for Holder

A House committee is asking a federal judge to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of court for failing to comply with a deadline a judge set to turn over documents related to the Justice Department’s response to Operation Fast and Furious.

In a motion filed Thursday afternoon, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee asked U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson to fine Holder personally if he doesn’t comply with an order Jackson issued in August requiring him to turn over non-privileged documents responsive to a committee subpoena by Oct. 1.

Story Continued Below

House lawyers even suggest it may be necessary to throw the attorney general in jail to get him to abide by the court order.

“Should the Court determine that the Attorney General has violated that Order, the Court should impose on the Attorney General an appropriate penalty to coerce his compliance with the August 20 Order, including an escalating daily monetary fine against Eric H. Holder, Jr., to be paid by Mr. Holder out of his personal assets, converting to incarceration if the payment of daily monetary fines does not produce compliance within a reasonable period of time,” House Counsel Kerry Kircher and other lawyers wrote in the new motion (posted here).

Last month, lawyers for Holder requested an extension of the Wednesday deadline, arguing that it made more sense for Jackson to rule on all the disputed records and then take the case to the D.C. Circuit for an appeal rather than proceed piecemeal.

House lawyers said they want any documents they’re entitled to now, rather than waiting. The House committee did indicate earlier that it would not object to extending the deadline until Nov. 3.

However, the new House motion argues the extension Holder sought was not to apply to all the documents he was required to turn over. The Justice Department contends it does.

Justice Department spokesman Brian Fallon said Thursday evening: “We’re at a loss to understand this latest stunt since the committee itself did not object to November as an appropriate timeline for the production of any documents. The Department will respond to the motion in due course.”

“Attorney General Holder and his department have now failed to comply with a binding federal court order,” Issa said. “The attorney general and his department are acting as if the judge in the case has an obligation to modify her rulings with which they disagree, rather than they having the obligation to comply with those rulings. That is the arrogance that landed this case in court in the first place.”

Issa also disputed the relevance of his committee’s stated willingness to agree to an extension.

“Contrary to the counterfactual claims of the Justice Department, the House did not agree to any deadline extension absent a ruling from the judge and in fact has asked the judge to enforce her order,” the chairman said. “The American people can only continue to guess at what the attorney general and his department are hiding.”

After President Barack Obama asserted executive privilege over tens of thousands of pages of Justice Department documents relating to the response to the Fast and Furious “gunwalking” scandal, the House held a pair of votes in June 2012 finding Holder in contempt of Congress. One of those votes authorized a lawsuit against Holder to force disclosure of the documents.

That suit, filed in August 2012, has been mired in procedural motions and mediation for more than two years. Jackson rejected a Justice Department motion to dismiss the case. However, she also rejected the committee’s position that executive privilege cannot extend to records of executive branch agencies.

The judge recently set deadlines for Holder to turn over any documents that are not part of the government’s deliberative process and to make a log of all other relevant documents, explaining why they’re being withheld.

Last week, Holder announced that he plans to step down in the coming months, but will remain in office until his successor is confirmed.